In the US it's legal to report on the returns before the polls are closed?

In the UK this could result in six months in jail or a £5000 fine, under the theory that it may influence those that have not yet cast their votes. I can see that, with all the time-zones and people and everything, it would be more difficult to co-ordinate this in the US, but it feels weird to me.

The USA is a foreign country. They do things differently over there...

Braxis, as I recall, the results of a Primary in a New Hampshire district can be reported when all the voters in the district have cast their vote. And Dixville Notch is a tiny district which organises to get the votes cast and the poll counted at the earliest possible moment.

Braxis @12:under the theory that it may influence those that have not yet cast their votes. I can see that, with all the time-zones and people and everything, it would be more difficult to co-ordinate this in the US, but it feels weird to me.

Speaking as a Californian, watching national races be called one way or another before our polls closed was always very...vexing to me. And it reduced the votes on local issues, unless there were big enough state issues to bring people to the polls notwithstanding the pre-determined outcome of the national stuff.

(Of course, speaking as a Californian, we were also always very predictable about which party would get our electoral votes.)

Actually, I've been following Vermin Supreme. He's got some interesting points. His main focus is on dental hygiene, and he wants to be clear that there is no reason to fear the Dental Police under his regime kicking down your door at 3 AM and hauling you off to Dental Reeducation camp, as long as you brush your teeth.

He has a two-part energy policy: first, he's going to provide every American with a pony (and it will be mandatory to keep your pony with you at all times, for federal identification purposes), and he expects to be able to harvest the manure for methane production.

The other prong of his policy is to use zombies on treadmills to generate electricity.

So the four independents either (1) voted for Huntsman and Romney, with Gingrich and Paul splitting the Republican vote (2) voted for Huntsman, Paul, and Gingrich, with Romney sweeping the Republican vote, (3) voted for Romney, Paul, and Gingrich, with Huntsman sweeping the Republican vote, or (4) voted for all four, with the Republican vote splitting between Romney and Huntsman.

My guess, and this is strictly a guess, is that the registered Republicans voted for Romney and Gingrich, while the remaining three Independents voted for Huntsman and Paul.

Here, Independents can vote in any race, while registered party members can only vote in that party's primary. Around 40% of the state is registered Independent.

I myself am an Independent. Last time around I voted in the Democratic primary, since that was the more interesting race. This time around, I'll be voting in the Republican primary. Again, the more interesting race.

(In the USA, voting precincts can announce the totals as soon as all of the votes are counted. That usually takes hours-to-days, though, so it's no problem with influencing the vote elsewhere. The national media has taken to refraining from "calling the race" before the polls close on the west coast. Used to be, they'd call the race before the polls even closed in the state, and we'd get things like "CBS is calling NameOState for Candidate with 12% of the districts reporting....")

I suppose our election laws on this point predate the invention of the telegraph, and what state wants to be the first to change?

Listen, the good people of Dixville Notch would be grateful for any kind of panther, two legs or four: they could use some graduate students up there doing research. Biology, sociology, ethnology--nobody's feeling choosy.

Fox News drilled a hole in the bottom of the barrel a while ago. The only question left is how deep the hole will get before it collapses.

Bruce, @17: since at latest estimate there are 100 million people in the Philippines, roughly 3 times the number in California, Filipino statehood might actually make the situation better, since it would be very difficult to call elections before their votes were reported.

Except that the Philippines are on the other side of the international date line, so their results would come in first. Ouch.

abi, we Hawai'i voters are still bitter about Jimmy Carter conceding to Reagan in 1980 before our polls had even closed. Not that our Presidential votes would have made a difference, but that downballot races might/could/possibly were affected.

Abi@16, I'm calling both the California Democratic Primary and the California General Election for Obama. Republican primary's still too close to call, but if I were betting I'd bet a beer that Romney takes it, and a soft drink on Ron Paul coming in second.

Braxis@12, while election rules certainly are different here in the US, Dixville Notch is extra special - the town voters all show up and vote a minute after midnight, and then they can close the polls and announce results because everybody who's eligible to vote has done so. Combined with New Hampshire's rules allowing independents to vote in any party's primary, it can lead to interesting results; back in 1992 the Libertarians won (Andre Marrou, who'd been Ron Paul's vice presidential running mate in the 1988 election, campaigned in Dixville Notch and got more votes than either of the major parties.)

Abi@16 As someone with a northern working town heritage, who votes in a rural oxfordshire constituency, I can see where you're coming from. It's sometimes hard to convince yourself that it's worth the effort to vote.

In the UK, polling stations open at 07:00 and close at 22:00 on the dot. Ballot boxes are then transported to the constituency counting office and the count commences. The record is currently held by Sunderland South where, in 2005, 32,000 ballots were counted in 43 minutes.

The question is, given that the lads and lasses of the north east of England managed to count around 750 votes per minute, why was Dixville Nox so slow?

Henry Troup @35 -- I haven't checked what exactly the problem is, but there seems to be something wrong with your UTC conversions. The local time periods are all twelve hours long, but the UTC versions for Eastern, Central and Mountain are only eleven hours long, so unless your elections coincide with a DST change something must be wrong.

Stefan@37/8: "talking-pointfullness"? Maybe us Brits are just too cynical about sentimental rhetoric but it reads as barfworthy and hollow over hear. Or are my irony meters miscalibrated and that's what you meant?

Jules@39 - I think I got the closing time wrong (which is the important one) for the middle zones, and it's 0230 UTC so there's only a half hour between closing the polls in most of the land area and then in B.C.

If it helps, the first time I read it I saw "pointful" and thought "opposite of pointless"; I had to re-read it to grasp that "talking-pointful" is closer to a synonym.

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